Higher Counts of Malware Taking Over Google Search Results?

I often see threads in the various discussion forums online with people complaining that the Google search results look weird. They often complain the wrong sites come up, or they are full of ads or there are weird pop ups. The answer to these issues is often that their computers have been infected with some form of virus and/or malware.

As Google becomes more popular and less savvy searchers use computers and Google, more and more people get hit by these viruses. I believe this weekend had one of the higher levels of reports in the various forums, with complaints of this nature. Unsuspecting searchers, complaining that Google failed them, when in reality, their security software has failed them.

I'll share just a few of the many threads I spotted on this topic. Here are one, two, three and four threads, with different issues, but all seem to be due to malware issues.